The economics and politics of instability, empire, and energy, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, plus other random blather and my wonderful wonderful wife. And I’d like a cigar right now.

I hate Brooklyn

The exceptions? First, the place in Russia. That is where ukelele-playing belongs. AFAICT they make no claims to Brooklyn; it’s a bad sign about America that the blog-writers somehow pinned faux-nostalgia-ukelele music as having something to do with the county of Kings.

Second, the Brooklyn Cafe in Glasgow. “What??” you ask? Well, consider. They serve a Brooklyn Cheese Steak. Which I can only call an honest — and completely hilarious — mistake. Props.

Finally, the bagel place in Australia. Yes, it sounds terrible. But unlike the rest, it actually has some connection to the culture of the borough as it existed before the emergence of this weird new “brand.”

The rest of the list use the Brooklyn name but have nothing to do with the uneasy mess of Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, African-American and West Indian laid over a Protestant substrate that actually, you know, made Brooklyn into Brooklyn from pretty much the moment that the eponymous bridge was built until, I dunno, sometime around 2005.

This would not have happened if you coulda just built big ugly buildings instead of pricing everyone normal out of the place.

Anyway, I know a good red sauce place in Fort Lee, my new pretend home town. Above is the view from my aunt’s living room in 2005. That is a real New York ambience for you.